Word: sun
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...discoverer, Czech Astronomer Luboš Kohoutek- pronounced Loo-bosh Ko-hoe-tek); it promises to rival and perhaps surpass in brightness Halley's comet, which last appeared in 1910 and will not be seen again until 1986. By the time Kohoutek emerges from its passage behind the sun early in January, its tail should be full grown, a glittering streamer extending across as much as a sixth of the evening sky. There is some chance that Kohoutek will not live up to all its billing - comets are notoriously unpredictable. Some split into several parts as they approach the sun...
...birth of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago. Thus Kohoutek, which was spotted first at the Hamburg Observatory last March, offers a splendid opportunity for observers to learn more about the drama of creation. Indeed, because the comet was discovered so long before its close approach to the sun, there has been time for elaborate preparation. Kohoutek may well be the most intensely scrutinized celestial object in the history of astronomy; it will be tracked and studied by thousands of scientists and an incredible array of instruments ranging from the 200-in. telescope on Mount Palomar to the sophisticated...
...many of the others that influenced ancient history were one and the same: the celestial visitor that became known as Halley's comet. A 17th century protégé of Isaac Newton, Edmund Halley was convinced that comets travel, like planets, in closed orbits around the sun. Using his mentor's formulas, he calculated the paths of comets dating back to 1337 and found that three-those of 1456, 1531 and 1607 -had roughly the same orbit as the comet of 1682 (which he had seen as a young man). Halley concluded that they were...
...wrote that he expected to die during its next ("The Almighty has said, no doubt: 'Now here are these two unaccountable freaks, they came in together, they must go out together.' "), died only a day after Halley's comet made its closest approach to the sun...
...Oort, who says that comets exist by the billions in a vast swarm of debris beyond Pluto that stretches halfway to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri. The debris, called Oort's Cloud, coalesced from the swirling dust and gases in the original solar nebula, from which the sun, earth and other planets and moons were formed. Thus comets are primordial matter, largely unchanged since the solar system's birth. (Lyttleton ascribes a different origin to the comets: he thinks that they are swept up by solar gravity as the sun wheels around the galaxy through clouds of interstellar...